Blues for Mister Charlie

James Baldwin · 1964 CE · Play · Modern / American · Contemporary

Richard Henry comes home from New York to his father's Southern parish carrying a habit and a refusal to defer, and a white storekeeper who has been drinking about his own reputation shoots him. The stage is split between Whitetown and Blacktown, and the courtroom that follows lets each side testify past the other. Baldwin wrote it after the murder of Medgar Evers, to whose memory it is dedicated, and drew on the killing of Emmett Till.

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